Friends, the first reading and Gospel this Sunday have to do with the Church at war with itself. The devil is the scatterer, the divider, and one of his favorite tricks is to take the Church—which is meant to be an instrument of the Gospel in the world—and to turn us against one another.
Watch Whoever Is Not Against Us Is For Us - Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon Here
GOSPEL
Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time
Mark 9:38–43, 45, 47–48
Friends, in our Gospel today, Jesus speaks, with incredible bluntness, about cutting off one’s hand and foot and plucking out one’s own eye. If these things are a block to your salvation, get rid of them, for it is better to enter life maimed than to enter Gehenna with all of your limbs and members.
The hand is the organ by which we reach out and grasp things. The soul is meant for union with God, but we have instead reached out to creatures, all of our energies grasping at finite things.
The Lord also speaks of the foot. The foot is the organ by which we set ourselves on a definite path. We are meant to walk on the path that is Christ. Do we? Or have we set out down a hundred errant paths, leading to glory, honor, power, or pleasure?
We are designed to seek after and look for God. Have we spent much of our lives looking in all the wrong places, beguiled by the beauties and enticements of this world? And are we willing to pluck out our eye spiritually, to abandon many of the preoccupations that have given us pleasure?